Forget You Not: Concentration Camps Revealed

Updated on August 9, 2009

Why I Am Doing This Hub

Many people know about Nazi Germany. They already know a lot about what happened in concentration camps. This is not a newly visited subject. But, I thought it would be interesting to revisit this subject because of the astronomical changes that are occurring in modern history at this very moment--i.e. having a black president, foreign wars over religion, and unease about how to handle government's control over a nation. I have to admit, having a German spouse has some altruistic motive for me. However, I'd like to point out that my spouse and his family are not supporters of genocide and the Nazi regime.

Entrance to Auschwitz

Auschwitz I camp in 1944

Auschwitz II camp in 1944

March 1942 began the journey for many to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Auschwitz was located in Oswiecim outside of Cracow, Poland,because it was a central intersection of roads and railways. Sometimes several trains would arrive on the same day, each carrying one thousand or more human beings coming from the ghettos of Eastern Europe, as well as from Western and Southern European countries.

An SS has the woman (whose hair is covered in the tradition of an Orthodox Jewish wife) with her infant child to join those being sent to the crematoria. We also can see a man that is standing between the columns missing his pants and one shoe. This

burying the dead after Auschwitz Liberation of 1945

Auschwitz survivors during the LIberation in 1945.

The entrance to Auscwitcz was disguised as a regular train station complete with foliage,signs, timetables,even a clock on the wall.

The Jews were stripped of their belongings and had their heads shaved and placed in sub-standard clothing, marked with a number, and referred to as that number instead of their name.

crematorium

often people would collapse after being over worked or riddled with disease right in their tracks....

NOT your Holiday Inn...

outside the Infirmory

A great deal of the time people died from the poor conditions o the rail cars prior to ever getting to the concentration camps...

Between 1.3-1.5 million people were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz -- more than 90% were Jews. The other ten percent were Poles, Soviet Prisoners of War, Sinti Roma, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals and others. The vast majority of the victims --who came from both Western and Eastern Europe including Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and other countries-- were unaware of their destination and of their fate. They were transported like animals in cattle-cars and arrived in a state of total collapse to the camp. Most of the people actually never really entered the camp, but just crossed it on the way to the gas chambers.

Jack Oran, A Holocaust survivor, relates:

"Everyone worked so hard, got beaten up…and came back to the camp -- the exhaustion alone pushed him to the bunk to lie down and sleep throughout the night and get enough strength so that s/he might be able to do that again tomorrow. …In the morning, sixty percent of the six people [in the bunk] did not wake up. The other forty percent went over the pockets of the dead people to find a piece of bread…The hygienic condition was very, very poor in that period. I remember that I searched a dead body in the bunk and I found a piece of bread. That piece of bread was crawling with lice and you shook them off the bread and put it in your mouth and ate it. We all were crawling with lice. Taking a shower was not an option. To get out in the morning, to walk toward the barrack where there is water, running water &endash; you didn't want to walk through mud. If you walked through the mud you probably lost a shoe and then you had to go barefoot. So it would be damned if I do and damned if I don't. Those were the conditions."

Many Jewish people didn't have time to say goodbye to their loved ones. Often they would be in the middle of eating supper, for an example, and be interupted and taken against their will. If families arrived at the camps together, they were often brutally separated, formed into lines, and one line would be immediately taken to the gas chambers to be killed. The others would be slowly and agonizingly tortured by slave labor, prostitution, medical experiements, etc.

Over 50% of the registered prisoners died as a result of starvation, labor that exceeded their physical capacity, the terror that raged in the camp, executions, the inhuman living conditions, disease and epidemics, punishment, torture, and criminal medical experiments.

Originally the camps were set up for Polish prisoners.

In all, 1.1 million people died during the four and a half years of Auschwitz's existence; one million of them were Jewish men, women and children.

Polish political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, people with disabilities, homosexuals and prisoners of conscience or religious faith were also murdered.

Only an estimated 11 percent of Jewish children who were alive in 1933 survived the Holocaust.

Quick Facts

More people died in Auschwitz than the British and American losses of World War Two combined

The unit where valuables of the prisoners were kept was called Canada, because that was believed to be the land of riches

About 200,000 inmates of the camp survived

Between May 14 and July 8,1944, 437,402 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 148 trains. This was probably the largest single mass deportation during the Holocaust.

Twins were a gold mine of medical experiments that were gratuitous and barbaric, usually without anesthesia.

Holocaust SurvivorsHolocaust Survivors, an excellent educational resource about the Nazi Holocaust of Jews in World War II, includes interviews, photographs and audio recordings of survivors. Other features include interactive discussions, a Holocaust encyclopedia and

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5 comments

I'm speechless. I'm just happy I ate hours ago. Thanks AsherKade. I guess you could've gotten a bit more graphic but didn't. Hopefully some of us will open our eyes and wake the hell up.

AsherKade 7 years ago from Texas Author

Thanks! I wish I knew why this hub has "subsantial portion on other web sites" (just noticed that)... while I got the pics from other sites, and the links go to other sites, everything else was my work...HUb PAges frustrates me at times...

Dame Scribe 7 years ago from Canada

A very heartbreaking piece of history for Mankind I believe and never to be forgotten.

MagicStarER 7 years ago from Western Kentucky

Thanks for a very good article about the Holocaust. We would do well in remembering it & studying its causes very closely.

These things are not over, however. And worse is happening right now, all over the world.

The United States has murdered almost 2 million innocent civilians in Iraq, mostly women and children. And caused the displacement of over 5 million.

In Afghanistan, many more millions were killed in the invasions by Russia and later, by the US, and over 8 million people displaced.

There are over 14 million refugees of wars in Africa, many, many millions of dead.

These are not the only places this is happening...

Auschwitz was nothing, compared to what is going on in the world today, in our own times.